While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.
Here you go. Here's your "War on Terror." I'd like to thank the current administration for lowering the human rights standards of the United States into the area of such towering 20th century figures as the Somozas, and Hideki Tojo. How many people have been killed in Guantanamo, Abu Gharib, Bagram and the black prisons being operated? Hell, how many people are even IN them? This is AMERICA. When we say something about "the rule of law" it's supposed to mean something. It does not mean, "Hey, we caught this guy skulking around over there, let's beat the shit out of him until he says what he was doing, and if he croaks well too bad." It does not mean making the middle east once again safe for forced protitution and slavery. When this country fought World War II it was to stop the agression of Germany and along the way it became about genocide. When this country fought in Korea it was to stop the commies who were doing this kind of thing in Russia under Stalin and in China under Mao. When this country fought in Vietnam it was ostensibly for the same reasons and when we realized the people we were supporting were no better and it was turning us into the same kind of people we were fighting, we got the hell out. We stopped propping up the Somozas. We stopped supporting the Shah. We stopped supporting the Duvaliers. We stopped supporting Augusto Pinochet. We stopped supporting Ferdinand Marcos. We fought against Slobodan Milosovic. We stopped supporting Saddam Hussain and fought to remove him from Kuwait. The people who acted at Bagram and Abu Gharib bear direct responsibilty for their actions, and those actions are called war crimes. They have done what John Demjanjuk was accused of. The people who oversaw and approved those actions are no different from the people who ran POW camps for Japan in World War II or the people who ran the camps where John McCain and James Stockdale were held in Vietnam. And in the particular case of the "black prisons," the responsibility for them rests in the hands of the person who would have authorized their creation. By law, the only person who could have authorized this is George W. Bush. The agency set up prisons under its covert action authority. Under U.S. law, only the president can authorize a covert action, by signing a document called a presidential finding. Findings must not break U.S. law and are reviewed and approved by CIA, Justice Department and White House legal advisers.
Who else would have been involved? Alberto Gonzales for one. John Woo is likely another possibility, as would be John Ashcroft. The best that I can say about the creation of these camps is that they don't seem to be targetting people here for this kind of treatment, but the NSA wiretaps questions make you wonder whether or not that will change. The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.
CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons | 
